BLS 2026 Winter Meeting at Carlisle: Part 2: Saturday

 I find myself not sleeping too well the night after after the Friday meal due to waking with leg cramp. But what a nice spacious room it is. And I can read my newly acquired book "Gut".  I get up and made myself a cup of tea and eat the hotel bedroom biscuit. That is enough for breakfast! I set off for Tullie House 300 m away, but call in at the Cathedral 150m away first. - really blessed with this central location!

Carlisle Cathedral has been on the radio this previous week - as part of a competition to vote for the best Window out of a choice of the top twelve windows of English Cathedrals. So I am curious to see inside.

The choir stalls are in the centre of the cathedral, and a guide is showing a lady the misericords.. we then go round to the side and he draws open a very tall curtain to reveal a huge panel of pictures showing the life of St Augustine (The Cathedral was built as an Augustinian Priory in 1133 )

Various committee members present reports. We vote for committee members. We vote for trustees on council -  two restanding ones and two new ones.

Mary Steer becomes our new president.

Then Mary has a new task - to present the Ursula Duncan Award.  Ursula Duncan wrote the standard British "Lichen text /key" that people used 70 years ago, with black and white line drawings.  The BLS gives an award in her name to people who have contributed to lichenology. I remember at the first BLS AGM I attended over 10 years ago it was given to Ishbee for her work in surveying churchyards.  We had had to keep it quiet from her that she would be receiving it. 

As Mary started talking about the LCIG groups and the LABS groups.. and how many Zoom sessions we had held it suddenly dawned on me who was getting it this year. .

Then it was lunch time. I ate in the Tullie cafe and sat with Sue and Les Knight and Allan Pentecost and met lots of other people. THen a quick glace at the displays again

Acarospora smaragdula on the Tullie House wall on Abbey Street.

"

We had talks by Les Knight on crusts on walls in Swaledale,

By Chris Ellis ..

By James Paton on crusts on his door steps in Edinburgh

Small gap whilst I look for my notes..... (to be finished shortly)

We had to pack up by 5pm to let the Tullie House staff clean up the building.  I walked with Lesley from Otley and Allan Pentecost towards the station, as they had trains to catch, but a little spare time. All the cafes and bars were noisy andheavng with people. So we went to the sation and bought drinks at the Smiths shop there and drank them at the picnic table on the platform.

Then I returned to the hotel and found two groups, later three who had retreated to the hotel restaurant - having found Carlisle too busy on an earlry Saturday evening.

Then, anticipating the field work on the Sunday at the cemetery  I decided an early night was called for... And I slept well.

BLS 2026 Winter Meeting at Carlisle: - Part 1 Fri

BLS 2026 Winter Meeting at Carlisle: - Part 2 - this post

BLS 2026 Winter Meeting at Carlisle: - Part 3 
Sun - Cemetery Field Trip

   

Lichens at Carlisle Cemetery: Part 3 of The BLS 2026 Winter meeting at Carlisle

Earlier posts: 
Part 1: Friday 30 Jan - Settle to Carlisle; and first day  
Part 2: BLS 2026 Winter Meeting at Carlisle: AGM & Talks 
Part 3: BLS 2026 Winter Meeting at Carlisle: Su 1 Feb: This post

Sunday - Cemetery Field Trip

10am Carlisle Cremetorium boundary with Carlisle Cemetery - Fay introduces the morning's instructions in respectful tone.. 

Kiar  meanwhile glaces at lichens on the adjacent seat

then we all pose for the group photo

Then we are off to the cemetery proper with grave stones. 

What better place to start than a headstone with Psilolechia lucida - well know for liking acid stones and growing in underhangs

On the other side they are looking at  Physconia - grisea or enteroxantha. ? John suggests enteroxantha. It is supposed to have bottle-brush rhizines underneath at the centre of the thallus, though it can have simple ones at the edge. Janet cuts of the edge of the thallus to reveal rhizines below.  They still don't look very bottle brushy to me - I shall revisit some of my Physconia grisea sites near Settle now and check those..

Closer up of Physconia

They are now looking at the Psilolechia side - and the Physconia is in view
at the top to us at the centre of the picture.
See the tarmac path behind them - we'll be looking at that three pictures below

Umm..

Lecidia lithophila

Lecidia lithophila

John lies down on the tarmac to record common things like Physcia caesia and Lecanora muralis then points to this white lichen - Porpidia crustulata - separated in Dobson from Porpidia macroacarpa by size of apothecia - less than 1.3 mm comes to P crustulata - but he takes a sample home to check.

See the white crustose lichen..

Hope Paul will come back with a suggestion for this.

Some Placopyrenium fuscellum  growing on Verrucaria nigrescens

Placopyrenium fuscellum 

portable digital microscope

Back for lunch at 12.

Lecanora crenularia on cement between the slate slabs on  the wall.

After lunch I search the group of people I had been with initially,  but they have gone. I use the map provided at the Crematorium and set off walking north.. and come to the Dissenters Chapel,  The roof facing north had big colonies of Rhizocarpon geographicum  and there is Porpidia tuberculosa on the butresses below.

In the bricks and cement on the right I see lots of apothecia

I think this is Lecanora albescens - but I really wish I had tested ti with C to make sure it is not L antiqua. Too late now.

No Rhizocarpon geographicum on the south facing side

View west from this chapel

To the north of this chapel is a low tombstone with a sloping roof, with two interesting lichens  - see tomb in foreground:-

On the west facing side there is abundant Cladonia polydactyla.

This is a Cladonia with red apothecia, 

Cladonia polydactyla

More Cladonia polydactyla - podetia often branched, hornlike and usually proliferating from the rim of a deformed cup. Primary squamules bluish grey with incised tips.

On the east facing slope - making flat space between the moss and the foliose lichen are patches of a crustose lichen

See the patches above, between the moss and the grey foliose lichen

Well this is one lichen I will have to think about.

Still thinking..

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Fay gives me a lift back to the station. Here I meet Joseph Halda, also waiting for a train. He buys me a coffee and we sat on the station picnic tables.

I catch the 3:20 train. I enjoy views on the way home. Down there is the meandering river Eden.. The base for the coming BLS spring meeting this  11-18 April. Above is the Pennine ridge - Dufton Pike - and other Hills above High Cup Nick .. Somewhere just beyond there is the site of Moor House a YNU trip to be held there in 1-2 Aug There are patches of snow on the tops. The train travels higher and we near the summit where the rive Swale captures catchment from the River Ure.  Weird to see "Dent", "Sheffield" and "Nottingham" - on the train announcement panel. But we pass Garsdale, Dent, Horton in Ribblesdale.. and I get off at Settle.

 ......just after 5 and get to my car - safely there - but now adorned with 15 huge bird droppings!!. I look up:- Not just tree branches above but also telephone / electric wires. I look down:- the dark tarmac.. not sure if I could see droppings .. but maybe one or two lichens - like those on the crematorium path earlier in the day. I will come back in the daylight on a warm day and check them!!.